#General Thoughts/Feedback after 150 hours.

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

spiral remnant
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Been playing this game for a while now and mostly enjoying it, that said I have some thoughts.

First off I would love to see the team focus entirely on bug fixing and crash prevention before adding "more" content to the game.
I won't go on to long about this point, its just slightly annoying to see things like new chapters of the campaign coming out when Coop can't be played for 20 minutes without a crash to desktop.
That said don't take this as hostility or whining, simply stating what I personally would prefer to see.

alright now to the juicy stuff, this will probably be longer then a single post so I'll be doing multiple messages.

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UI/hotkeys:
The one thing I want to see fixed above all else (except crashes) is the hotkey override function.
The games forced grid hotkeys are... fine for the most part, as far as RTS control goes I'd give it like a 4/10.
Hotkey override in its current state is effectively unusable.
You can't conflict with any other input in the game, lets say for example I wanted to without changing the dynamic hotkeys put snipe on and crack fire both on "I".
Oops hotkey conflict you can't put crack fire on I you already have Snipe on I.
Hotkey override should only be warning you about an input conflict if both inputs appear on the same command card.

As far as the UI goes my only complaint is both forms of the mini map are for the most part pretty useless.
The individual blips from nightmares are so small that you'd never see a harassment wave trickling in.
The zoomed in version of the map takes up so much of the screen you have to stop what you are doing to use it.

It'd be nice if there was some kind of bloom or something that gets larger based on how many entities are near each other, so I can actually see the harassment waves without using the not-so-mini map.

Unit Enemy design:
As mentioned in other posts the AOE circles for every enemy unit lies, and in some cases by an unacceptable amount. The bursters aoe circle for example is about 10-15% to small a unit that is well past the boundary of the telegraph still takes damage from it.

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The Burster/Bloater/Exploding unit:
I absolutely hate the design and existence of this unit.
Some of the most hated units across all of RTS share a lot of common properties with this one.
The StarCraft 2 community for example disagrees on a lot of things, but the design of the widow mine is not one of them.
It is widely regarded by an overwhelming majority as the worst unit to be added to the game. Its primary function is also nearly identical to the burster:
you looked away from your army for a few seconds? lol congrats they all dead now.

Quite simply a kamikaze unit that's whole job is to punish you for having the sheer audacity to look away from your army without pausing the game is just not fun or engaging gameplay.
If these only appeared in death nights as some sort of anti-building specialist I think they'd be in a much better role.

Additionally this unit is what I would consider a "hard counter" it makes building things that don't have armor like cultists and rogues feel like an extremely stupid and risky move.
This is primarily because of two factors the first being just looking away at the wrong time, the second being horrify itself.
I cannot count how many times I've had a spitter or wraith aoe land as I was attempting to disengage and my units were made so slow there is no way on Earth they would escape the burster explosion.
Of those units caught in the blast I can be certain that even with full HP every single rogue and cultist just died. This is as Josh Strife Hayes would put it "a quit moment".

If I had one piece of advice for the unit retaining its current role I would say use a radial damage factor. The further you are from the center of the blast the less damage it does, ideally dealing 50-75% less damage on the outer most edge of the explosion.

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The Crusher:
Where to start with how much I dislike this unit. The crusher to me feels like the most egregious example of the failings of the current armor/shred system.
An over tuned "boss" unit that in the late game has several hundred armor on top of several thousand hp, this thing can 1-2 shot every ground unit in the game including my own armored units.
But hard countering melee units is not its only role, it also tears down structures faster then anything else in the game and has caused me more losses then any other unit.
Didn't get enough backline shred? gonna loose to the crusher having cheat codes on. Got enough shred but didn't get enough front line? gonna loose to the crusher smacking in your walls into oblivion before you can kill it.
Got plenty of front line and shred but its all in melee units? oops you didn't kill the crusher the moment it got into attack range and now 45% of your army is dead.

All of this combined with the fact that these things come in droves on horrific and nightmare just makes it feel like such a terrible unit.

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It forces the player into a very specific composition every single game and removes all meaningful choice in setting up defenses.
I would love to see this unit dramatically reworked and nerfed and some of the things it excels at being spread out into other units possibly even other bosses for death nights.

The Melee unit counter, also having absurdly high armor, while also being the primary structure counter, while also being a massive DPS check just feels so bad the design confuses me to no end.
If I had one suggestion for changing this unit I would ask that the armor be dramatically nerfed or removed, its already a hard countering power house, at least allow my army do some damage or maybe even kill it instead of just dying to it for free. Not having enough archers/arbalists/impalers shouldn't result in an instant game over because this unit is essentially invulnerable to melee units.
In its current state I would compare this to the left 4 dead Tank having a higher move speed than the player and being invulnerable to all damage except melee.

I can happily say I have no complaints with the rest of the existing enemy specialists, a lot of the elites can feel a bit unfair and seem to encourage cheesing the tether radius.
But honestly they could stay as is and it wouldn't bother me.

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Player Units:

General army control:
-Give us the ability to scroll through command cards when multiple units are on a hotkey. In StarCraft 2 pressing tab switches to the next unit to the right in the command card.

-Change the command card priority so that ability casters always appear in the top of the list. Currently the Harbinger is below the cultist in the command card as an example. This makes it a massive pain in the butt to select them when they are on a hotkey with the rest of the army. I have no need to select a single cultist using the command card. I do however have a need for the Harbinger to be individually selectable, therefore it should have a high priority when it comes to appearing at the top of the list.

-To continue to harp on mechanics using the Harbinger as a punching bag. When I cast an active ability with multiples of the same spellcaster selected, it should use a single instance of the ability (see Starcraft 2's High Templar for an example of what I'm conveying here). Currently it uses all of them at once, if the ability doesn't deal damage and the effect does not stack it shouldn't be using every instance of it on a single key press. Some would argue this is a skill issue, for those people I would point to literally every spellcaster in StarCraft 2, if it could be done 15 years ago it can be done today.

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Armor/Shred:
This system feels a little half baked in its current state as though it was shoehorned in late in development. It seems to only serve to bottle neck player choice. I feel obligated to build arbalests and impalers every single game. Additionally this system as I mentioned above makes enemies like the crusher feel like they have effectively god mode if you don't play a very specific composition.
A big factor in RTS is replay ability and it comes from diversity of playstyle, at the moment it feels like there is almost none of that in age of darkness and I think it does more harm then good.
I would love to suggest ways to fix this system but to be quite honest, I just want a mutator that allows me to opt out of it. Completely remove armor/shred from my own units as well as the enemy.
Armor/Shred as well as entities like the Burster in the games current state with the games current roster feels like there is a "correct answer" in how to play.

My perspective as a player is the following, the "correct answer" developer intended way to play is:
You must have grand ballista, you must build hunters or arbalists in large numbers, you must also build impalers in large numbers.
If you refuse to do this for whatever reason unless you are an exceptionally skilled player of this game you will loose.

I think pivoting to a soft counter system would work much better. Examples of this would be SC1's small/medium/large system, SC2's tag/bonus damage system etc..
I think units both allied and enemy dealing bonus damage to specific types of units would be far more interesting than the current "you didn't build units with shred now pay a tax of 70% of your damage."

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To wrap up my thoughts on armor/shred killing build diversity in the current build, I would also mainly ask why this system exists? Its a Singleplayer/Co-op game exclusively, should the goal not be to maximize variety and fun rather then bottle necking mechanics and attempting to push players into an intended playstyle?
Thanks for coming to my Ted talk, hope some of my feedback was helpful/useful.

coarse blaze
# spiral remnant --- The Crusher: Where to start with how much I dislike this unit. The crusher t...

God, I cannot even begin to say how much I agree with you.
The only RTS I've played outside of AOD is TAB. TAB did the "Giant" unit so much better.
It could kill your units fast, but it would occassionally roar, meaning it did nothing and was a free target. Ontop of this, if you could kite it, it was a free kill as well.
Ontop of not doing near an infinite amount of damage, it's AOE hits were not massive.
The Crushers have too much: Armor, Health, Damage, Speed, and AOE. It breaks EVERY SINGLE RULE OF GAME BALANCING.

The crusher wouldn't be too "bad" if it only appeared once or twice.
But it doesn't.

Compared to TAB, the Giant enemy doesn't appear till the final 2 waves. Even on the hardest difficulty.
Meanwhile Crushers come on the second wave (In multiplayer).

Honestly, if they tweaked the crusher a small amount, removing armor, speed, and making it's roar happen more often, the crusher would be "more" balanced, and feel "fairer".

coarse blaze
silk crane
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Crusher was clearly added in because they have flame tower in the game that makes all other things do nothing; perhaps they could take a look at reducing aoe effectiveness

coarse blaze
silk crane
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It doesn't help that for some reason burster is weak to fire which means that x2 flame tower actually kills them before they can do anything

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It'd make sense to make burster resistant to flames and have them as wall busters

coarse blaze
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Hmmmm...

spiral remnant
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The crushers fundamentally feels like a band aid. If there's things on the players side that need to be tuned down that's the better direction to go in my mind.
The crusher has no role and wears to many hats.
My biggest issue is with everything it has going for it it's also armored. You must build specific units in large numbers every game or you will lose. Where is the strategy in that?